Hello Spring/ Spring bucket list fun

Hi everyone so finally Spring is officially upon us however it doesn't men that the rain will stop sadly.  There will still be plenty of Spring showers we can't have sun all the time eh?  So David's now at 22 months and it's getting harder and harder to keep his attention on one thing.  He is distracted very easily so even messy play doesn't keep him entertained for long.  Hopefully this is just a phase which I'm pretty sure it is.  So to try and help keep me sane whilst trying to entertain my son I came across this "Spring bucket list" I thought it was such a great idea!  Some of the ideas are aimed more at girls/older children so I won't be doing all of them but I'm sure I will come up with my own version.  So what have we been getting up to this week well let me show you.

So on Monday I decide to literally paint the windows. I placed some paper infront of David so he could paint.  He didn't show much interest....that was until granddad came round.  Ah the magic of grandparents where a child changes their attitude and becomes a little angel ha ha. Whilst David was painting I painted the window.  I used normal poster paint as I already asked lots of people and they said it just comes out with warm soapy water yay!  On Tuesday after the picture David had made dried I cut out flower shapes and blue-tac them to the stalks. Now even on a rainy day I have a lovely Spring window!

Later on that day we did some play dough he's got quite good with it but still every now and then he will go to put it in his mouth. He'll learn the more we play with it.  I put this in his stocking at Christmas (I mean santa did) and this is only his third time playing with it so he'll get there.  At the moment we stamp numbers as he's learning numbers at the moment.  We do phonics in the bath.  I've started introducing colours slowly too saying for example "where's the blue playdough" he doesn't quite understand yet but I'm not going to push him into just teach him through play how it should be done.  Well that's how I feel anyway. Too many mums out there think it's a race to get their child to do this or that first but it really isn't and if you think like that well I believe your child will think like that too and it's unhealthy.  Which reminds me here is quote I found on Facebook which I think says a lot.

We also had some fun with magnets.  I normally have them in the easel board tray with the pens but I decided to get a baking tray and sit on the sofa with David.  We put them in number order from 0 - 9 and also put them in groups of colours explaining what colour each group was.  David noticed straight away and joined in with grouping them which I was very proud of.  He also pointed out numbers two being his favourite of course ha ha.

From Thursday morning to Saturday afternoon David his round his fathers but this means I have him on Sunday which means family time as it's Matthew's day off yay! I decided to tick off one of the Spring Bucket list ideas and go bird watching with David.  I needed to go out shopping anyway to get some crafty bits to make a mothers day present.  We headed to Hanningfield reservoir it's a great place to go for nature and it doesn't cost a penny not even parking yay!  I took some bread so we could feed the ducks.  

A pair of greylag and Canada Geese.

The ducks were on the green near the parking as it was really windy on the lake.  There were plenty of geese and we only saw two ducks which was a shame.  It was still lots of fun though and I kept pointing to them saying "Look David Geese" "look David ducks"  He didn't care much for talking he was far too intrigued in just looking at them.  He got a bit upset though when he threw the bread and it didn't go far so the geese wouldn't eat it ha ha.  We got quite close to them but not too close they seemed to be surprisingly friendly though which was good. 

After we were done I headed to Chelmer Village to go to Hobby Craft to pick up a few bits whilst we were inside it chucked it down with hailstones when we came out it looked like everyone had chucked slush puppies on the floor or something.  Was quite remarkable and very rare.  That didn't put us off though (well Matthew maybe a little bit) and we headed to Pets at Home.  We look at a few pets and David was really intrigued by these small rodents called Degu's.  I am thinking now of getting him 2 females (they have to be in pairs or groups to stay happy) after his birthday but it all depends.  I'd get them a tall standing cage much similar to what a bird or ferret has as they love lots of space and I can give them clean plain sticks (baking them after cleaning you also have to make sure you know what tree it's from) and give them hay for bedding and food.  I've researched it a lot and talked to one of my friends about it who actually knew someone who owned some.  She said I've done very good research and that I know a lot which makes me confident. That's for a different blog though hey.

Degu's!  Ironically Pets At Home didn't give them a lot
of space I wasn't impressed!

Gerbils

Well that's it for this weeks blog,  do you have any pets?  What are your children's favourite?  Until next time byeeeee

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A week full of fun [warning very long post]

Hey everyone,  So today's post was supposed to be a cooking week and whilst we did cook together we only did it for 2 days.  The rest of the time we were out!  This week has just been sooooo busy it's unreal.  You know what though? I have loved it, even got a few lay-ins because we wore David out so much woho.  Another thing that has been nice to see is how much my boyfriend has started to bond more with my son.  He's always been good with children considering his family is quite big so naturally there are lots of them.  However starting a new relationship with someone who has a toddler is slightly different and although Matthew was fine with this he obviously found it a bit hard to adapt as we all know toddlers aren't always little angels, as much as we'd love them to be of course.  Over the past week though I have seen a step up, if you want to call it of their bond.  Matthew will now come home from work and David is so excited to see him.  He turns into a ball of hyperness it's unreal.  Most of the time David will be in his highchair when Matthew arrives home so, Matthew will play peekaboo hiding behind him.  Obviously there are still things Matthew needs to get used to like understanding the way David thinks.  For example when David empties his plate and hands it over, Matthew thought this was bad, but infact it's David's way of saying "I'm done mummy".  So I explained this to Matthew and now when David does this, he takes the plate from David but asks David to put the food that he doesn't want back on the plate then takes it out to the kitchen.  I've seen David want to play with Matthew more too but I shall explain that later.

So what have we been up to?  Well on Wednesday evening I thought it would be a perfect time to make our very own pizza's for dinner.  As you can see from the picture above David helped me with the toppings we started off with cheese and you can probably notice in the background plenty of vegetables (olives for me ;)) this is what we ended up with before it went in the oven.  I was a bit nervous and it looked massive but thank god it shrunk in the oven ha ha.

The next day (Thursday) we painted David's nan's plant pot.  I decided to use the tray that the mushrooms came in as a paint tray.  I only had yellow, red (it actually looks more pink) and blue.  So it kind of looked like a hippy decorated it.  Nanny didn't care though she was just happy that we decorated it. David had lots of fun painting it and afterwards he did some finger prints on some paper.

That night we also made hot dogs on spaghetti.  I had only seen pictures of this so I just guessed really on how to do it as it didn't look like rocket science.  Only thing I will do differently next time, is only put one chunk of hot dog on one bit of spaghetti, so it doesn't weigh it down so much.  David tried to help bless him but each time he tried to do it.  The pasta snapped, I felt so sorry for him so I helped him a tad bit.  Cheeky little sod kept eating the hot dogs too!  Oh and with me watching very closing he even wanted to help me cut the hot dogs up (with a blunt knife of course).....though the hot dogs went flying because of the technique he was using. Still little man A+ for effort.

On Friday we went out in the evening for nanny's birthday.  We went to Grand Central in Basildon and the food was amazing.  It's made me want to go again for my birthday to be honest.  The kids meals were quite a good selection...even if the fish fingers were obviously just from Asda that is opposite though.  Sadly David didn't eat much and was in a terrible mood.  Due to him being tired though as it was late.  He loved seeing his grandparents though and we walked around the restaurant for a bit and there were other children there dressed as tinkerbell.  It made me giggle when they went "hey look it's Spiderman" due to David wearing his Spiderman attire. I don't have any pictures as nanny took them all that night.

Saturday we went to nannys again too see Matthew's auntie, uncle and children.  They are all so lovely and I'm so glad I have invited them to the party.  Malina absolutely adores David and is always playing with him and picking him up.  I have no idea where she gets the strength from she's only 11! Matthew showed off his flips on the trampoline which is always a joy to watch..not going to lie.

On Sunday we went swimming. We went to Maldon leisure centre as the swimming pool in my town is too cold.  Sod's law decided to play a part of Maldon have now got a separate baby pool (they used to just have a separate area in the main pool which was warmer) but it was under maintenance.  I thought it would be fine but the water in the main pool was really cold even in the shallow bit that beforehand was especially for children.  David even started to shiver.  So even though he was having a good time splashing everywhere, chasing after Matthew, trying to even swim, we didn't stay in there for long.  Which was obviously a shame,  me and Matthew both agreed to come back when the baby pool was re-opened.

So as you can see me and David have had a realllly packed week.  It's been great fun though and I don't regret anything.  Sorry that this blog was so long but it was hard to keep it short.  Fingers crossed it didn't bore you too much. How has your week been?  Any activities you've been up to?  Or just a lazy week in?

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